fright night

If you really, really hate sleep, here’s what you need to watch

Carnival of Souls (1962) After surviving an accident that had killed her two friends, Mary Henry takes on a job as a church organist and tries to get on with

her life. However, this is made difficult by frequent run-ins with a mysterious man and an abandoned carnival. Nightmarish imagery

make this a true horror classic. – F.E.

Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

This bleak and controversial film is a transposition of the classic Marquis de Sade novel to WW2-era Italy. In this adaptation,

four hosts – the duke, the president, the magistrate, and the bishop - express their desires in the form of sexual perversions like coprophilia, necrophilia, and the torture of the

young men and women. – N.P. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) Rosemary’s Baby is a brooding, macabre film

that follows a couple as they go through a pregnancy. What is chilling about this movie is that the director gives the audience a great deal of information early on. By the halfway mark, you know who Rosemary’s baby really is, but that hardly matters since we are unable

to help her. – N.P.

The Wicker Man (1973)

We meet Sgt. Neil Howie, a religious policeman who investigates the a child’s disappearance in the fictional island of Summersisle. He then discovers that he plays a central part in a perverse May Day parade. It’s an unnerving kind of horror, which, in the era of cheap thrills, is worth a revisit. – N.P. Final Destination 3 (2006) Bus drivers and conductors here have a fucked-up taste in in-ride movies. Some of them will occasionally pop in a horror DVD in the bus player, and some of them will have the

gall to show you a Final Destination movie. The first four movies in the franchise are good watches, but the third made me forever wary

whenever I’m in a gym. – R.M. It Follows (2015) Teenager Jay sleeps with her boyfriend and contracts a sexually transmitted curse where a supernatural being takes the shape of any person to stalk her and end her life. It’s really the subtle anachronistic techniques employed

by filmmaker David Robert Mitchell— nondescript suburbia, classic cars, no cell

phones—that make it so eerie. – F.E. Shutter (2004) Asian horror films have always been scarier

than any other cinema in the world, but Thailand might have set the bar highest with the original Shutter. If Shutter doesn’t scare you enough to be a good person forever until you

die, you may just have no heart. – R.M. Time Lapse (2014) Three friends find a large contraption and

discover that it prints Polaroids showing events that will happen the next day. They begin to use it to their financial and personal advantage, but their futures grow more and more grim with each photo. It’s a successful, malicious commentary on morality and the

pitfalls of control, or lack thereof. – F.E. Eyes Without a Face (1962) To combat his guilt, a surgeon turned mad kidnaps young women and removes their

faces to replace that of his daughter’s, whose disfigurement was his own doing. Juxtapositions of the beautiful against the macabre are all over the film, a great example of the mad scientist genre and an atmospheric

portrayal of moral ambiguity. – F.E. Haplos (1982) The lives of a couple are shaken when the husband meets a strange girl at his mother’s grave and enters into an unfaithful relationship with her. The truth of the situation is more tragic and complicated, though. The movie is proof that Philippine cinema can helm ghost stories

that are brilliant and have heart. – F.E. Feng Shui (2004) One can argue that the Philippine brand has its own unique identity—one that borrows from both Western and Eastern influences and still somehow manages to stamp its own flavor. Feng Shui might be the best Filipino horror movie we’ve had in recent history, no matter what you think of Kris Aquino. (Wonder

if this ever affected bagua sales?) – R.M. Night and Fog (1955) This documentary is a look at the horrors that took place in the now abandoned grounds of the Jewish concentration camps. Throughout the film, we see mostly empty spaces save for the garments and other items that were collected from the dead. These scenes sum up to something so horrifying that we should have

us turn away, but we mustn’t. –N.P.